Don’t use 2022 WASSCE results to assess Free SHS – Private teachers

The Private School Teachers Association is warning politicians to desist from using results in the 2022 West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) to assess the overall performance of the government’s flagship education programme, Free Senior High School (Free SHS).

According to the association, if people start making that assertion concerning the introduction of the policy, they will get it all wrong.

The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Association, Mr William Baako, issued this warning while reacting to a statement attributed to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the 70th-anniversary celebrations of Opoku Ware Secondary School in the Ashanti Region.

According to the president, Free SHS has proven more impactful than what existed previously, based on the performance of students in the last two West Africa Secondary Schools Certificate Examinations (WASSCE).

“The 2022 WASSCE results of the third batch of Free SHS graduates show 60.39 per cent of students recording A1-C6 in English as opposed to 51.6 percent in 2016.

“62.5 per cent recording A1 to C6 in Integrated Science in 2022 as opposed to 48.35 per cent in 2016 with this year’s results being a slight regression from the 2021 pass rate of 65.7 per cent,” he said.

Mr Baako reacting to this on Accra 100.5 FM’s mid-day news on Monday, December 5, 2022: “Said the policy is good, let no one get me wrong but the implementation is the challenge.”

He contested that the policy could have been fine-tuned if it had been progressively implemented.

He said the policy would have been better had it been progressively free as suggested by former president John Dramani Mahama.

He noted that the mass implementation of the policy is part of the challenges to the laudable initiative to see all children of school-going age in the classroom.

He forcefully argued that what is needed to make the policy better was supervision and monitoring of the implementation process across the country.